NSC HAS NEW LINE OF INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

National Semiconductor Corp, Santa Clara, California has come out with a new family of integrated circuits that are claimed to offer a first in that they combine digital voice and facsimile capability as well as speech recognition: the chip uses Dispatch, a software-based facsimile and speech approach to enable system designers to customise their end-products; […]

National Semiconductor Corp, Santa Clara, California has come out with a new family of integrated circuits that are claimed to offer a first in that they combine digital voice and facsimile capability as well as speech recognition: the chip uses Dispatch, a software-based facsimile and speech approach to enable system designers to customise their end-products; the speaker-dependent speech recognition capability for controlling both fax and answering machine functions offers a set of up to 25 words; switching between send and receive modes, or from speech to fax modes is automatic under software control; there are three processors and three peripheral controllers that can be paired to create the desired capabilities; the three central processors are the 32-bit 32FX164, 32FV16 and 32FX161, each with on-chip signal processing, operating from 15MHz to 25MHz; paired with this device is one of three new fax controller chips, 32FX100, 32FV100 and 32FX200 to support both CIS and CCD scanners and thermal and laser printers; the basic 32FX100, designed for fax applications, features a printer-scanner interface, real time clock, three channels of DMA control and 16 gray levels, the 32FV100 adds audio quality DRAM controllers and a sigma delta analogue front end, and the 32FV100 is designed to support high-end applications, adding a DRAM controller of as much as 2Mb and 64 level gray scale reproduction at up to 25MHz; the lowest configuration of the 32FX161 plus the 32FX100 is $45 for 1,000-up and samples are available.